Harlow University Wellbeing
A university that met students where they were
Outcome
1,200 students reached
Demand at Harlow spiked every exam season, far beyond what the counselling team could hold. Students in crisis and students who just needed a steadier week were stuck in the same queue.
The situation
Harlow’s wellbeing service ran a single pathway: request an appointment, wait, see a counsellor. It worked reasonably well in October and collapsed in January and May, when the queue stretched past the end of term and students who needed urgent help sat behind students who needed a sounding board.
The team had no way to tell those two groups apart until the appointment itself. Triage was happening at the point of care, which is the most expensive place to put it.
What we changed
We built a second and a third route in, so the counsellor appointment stopped being the only thing on offer.
Drop-in conversations during peak weeks, held in the buildings students were already in rather than at the wellbeing centre.
A self-guided library of short, practical material for the pressures that recur every year — sleep, procrastination, exam panic, homesickness.
A brief check-in at the point of request, so urgent cases were surfaced within hours instead of weeks.
A one-page referral route for departmental tutors, replacing the informal “have a word with someone” that was quietly absorbing pastoral load.
What happened
Over twelve hundred students engaged in a single term, most through routes that had not existed the year before. Waiting times for the counsellor pathway fell even though its capacity did not change, because a large share of demand was met earlier and more lightly.
The service also got a clearer picture of its own year. Knowing that demand rises in weeks nine to twelve turned staffing from a reaction into a plan.
In their words
“We stopped treating every student as a referral. Some of them just needed twenty minutes and a different room.”
— Head of Student Wellbeing, Harlow University
Where it goes next
Harlow is now looking at the transition into first year, on the view that a good October reduces what arrives in January.
[PLACEHOLDER — figures illustrative; confirm before publishing.]
